Microsoft Software Development Engineering Intern Interview Questions & Reviews

Interview Details – On campus interview scheduled after career fair. Few questions asked about my interests in mobile and security subjects which I am studying. Tech question: To convert Roman numerals to decimal system and also test the same.

Interview Details – An on campus recruiter saw that I was skilled and pushed me onto a phone interview. Basic questions, if you can't get past this part without any prep, you're really not for this job, seriously. I was then sent up to Microsoft's headquarters and went through 5 rounds of interviews, including a lunch interview. All the interviewers asked programming questions except for the lunch interview, in which I interview my interviewer. They were all super nice, and it was one of the best experiences thus far.

Reason for Declining – Other opportunities.

Interview Details – one on campus interview and followed with 4 interviews after 2 weeks

Negotiation Details – No negotiation.

Interview Details – I submitted my resume at a career fair. I was subsequently invited to an on-campus interview with a recruiter who had previously worked as a PM. The interview was non-technical; he only asked about my previous work and which of the three internship types I was considering.

One week later I was invited to fly down to Redmond. Microsoft paid for the flights, sightseeing expenses, and a generous amount of food.

The onsite interview itself was four rounds. The first round was a standard dynamic programming problem, maximum-sum subarray. The next two rounds were tailored to my expressed interest in machine learning, and involved implementing the k-means algorithm and a predictive progress bar. The final round was with the team lead, who asked a very trivial coding problem and talked more about the position.

Previous reviews mentioned receiving an offer on the spot, which worried me when I was let go without a word. I got a phone call five days later with an offer.

Interview Details – First of all, they went to my university for a presentation and I gave them my resume. A week later, I was contacted by email about scheduling a phone interview. The phone interview (about 20 minutes) consisted of questions like:
- How would you test a keyboard?
- What is the difference between threads and processes?
- Imagine that you get home and you find out you don't have your keys. What would you do?

Then I received an email about my phone interview and the process for an interview at Microsoft started. Microsoft pays for flights, accommodation, taxis and even your food.

I was interviewed by four different people. The interviews start with a few questions and at the end the interviewer comes up with a problem and asks you to solve it. Once you present your solution, he asks you to code it on the board.

My advice is that you should keep talking and pay attention to the hints the interviewer you give you. If he notices that you're doing something wrong, he'll probably make a comment that you can use in order to find out the problem in your idea / code.

After coding, the interviewer will ask you to come up with test cases for your code. He is probably expecting you to come up with many test cases, so think as much as you can about ways to break the code!

In the same week after my interview, I received an offer by email and accepted it.

Negotiation Details – I didn't negotiate.

Interview Details – I had an on-campus screen and didn't feel that I performed very well, especially with the behavioral questions. Nevertheless, I got an email inviting me to interview in Redmond, WA. The day of the interview, I was nervous, but excited and enthused. My optimism and cheer carried me throughout the day. Everyone I met was so nice and genuine, and declined all phone calls and texts to give me their full attention. One of my interviewers gave me a hard time for not understanding his instructions for testing an algorithm I wrote, but I kept a smile on my face, took his criticism, and ended up giving my own good insight on the solution. I solved every problem during the day, although I didn't always get the best solution the first time. I was very thorough in my testing of each algorithm.

I was very excited to find out that I would be getting a 4th interview, which was with a manager. The function I had to code during this 4th interview was fairly straightforward. It was also easy to test.

Regarding the culture, as I said, everyone was very genuine and attentive. These were all people I would be excited to work with, and I had some pretty good banter with most of them. I got the affirmative interview results soon after. I had a great time in Seattle, and Microsoft of course paid all the expenses.

Negotiation Details – Did not negotiate. The offer exceeded my expectations.

Interview Details – Got an compus interview, 30mins. Asked about your project. Code question: reverse an string, and how to test your function.

Interview Details – Got the interview after 2 or 3 months after the career fair
I was interested in PM, the recruiter was a nice guy. After some background questions, ask me two design questions, and then we chat a little bit. I guess my design ideas are pretty ordinary

Interview Details – Applied online via website. Got a request for a phone interview about a month later. Phone interview was about 30 minutes and mainly asked like what parts of software you like dealing with (UI, Backend, Application layer etc) and then a test question (how would you test a ____ ) and a small math/logic brainteaser.

Got an email about 3 weeks later saying they would like to skip the next round of phone interviews and fly me out to Seattle for final rounds of interviews. Due to the holidays, the process got delayed a bit, but I set up flight/hotel and my day of interviews.

The whole trip was excellent, I felt like I was really being taken care of. They will reimburse a generous amount of money for things like food, transportation around the city. They even gave me some taxi vouchers on my interview day so I could explore Seattle and I wouldn't even have to pay, and it would get billed to Microsoft directly.

The on-site interview day is a long and challenging day, yet it was still enjoyable. You start out in the recruitment building where all the other candidates will be as well. You'll get individually called out by your recruiter who you meet with first. Then you are taken via Microsoft Connect vehicles to the building in which your team you will be interviewing with works.

I had 4 interviews, all technical. Every interview started out with a bit of resume talk, future plans and things about your time at school. Then we did 1 or 2 programming problems each. The technical problems are pretty industry standard, ranging from string manipulation to data structures, to graph theory. Just be sure to talk your way through them with the interviewer. All the interviewers asked even more probing questions to see how much you know about a subject. They asked me all the way down to actually implementing a hashing function when the topic of HashSets came up. But remember, it's okay to admit you don't know at a certain point!

They seem pretty agnostic about what language you use, and one interviewer even started the interview by saying that he is not a compiler, and will not care if there are small syntax errors. That was reassuring and put my mind to ease for small things.

There is also a lunch interview where you get some a lunch voucher to pay for you and your interviewer's lunch. Very light discussion during lunch, mostly about resume and past projects.

After all this, you will meet with your recruiter back at the recruitment building. My interviews went from 10am-5pm. Like previously stated, they gave me some taxi vouchers and I explored Seattle all night before returning to my hotel and catching my flight back the next morning. I can't wait to start!

Negotiation Details – Did not negotiate, it was above my expectations anyway.